A Quick Note on Latino Voters

The following is inspired by a comment thread on my post about Tim Donnelly’s political ad.

The following illustrates what ought to be obvious, but is lost on some who think that all they need to know about people is the hue of their skin, and that is: voters respond to the messages of parties and candidates. Specifically, we can see from the following chart from the Pew Research Center) that there has been a substantial amount of fluctuation of the Hispanic vote in presidential election over the last several decades:

Without even getting into specific policies, it is obvious that if the percentage of voters in group X who vote for party Z fluctuates over time, then the voters in group X are persuadable vis-a-vis voting for party Z. In other words, the numbers tell us that despite what some claim there are things that Republicans can do to attract (and to repel) Hispanic voters.

About Steven L. TaylorSteven L. Taylor is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Troy University. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging at PoliBlog since 2003.
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Yes, yes they can. Political parties are not coded to one’s DNA, nor wed to one’s psyche. In order to win someone over, you have to be the better choice…. or at least, the lesser of two evils. So go out and be the best representation of the People (ALL the People, not just those you like) you can be – build it and the People will come.

There are Republicans who get that, and those that don’t. Sad to say there seem to be more of the Don’t then the Dos at this time….

Ah, but the superduper claim is not that the GOP can’t possibly attract minority voters. It’s that you cannot do things that are “conservative” and appeal to such voters. If you successfully appeal to Them, you have done so by being liberal. [insert rant about single mothers, etc here]

The above graph suggests that 60/40 Dem/Rep is attainable. The problem, allegedly, is that in order to get to 60/40, you lose some of the usual Rep base. I don’t think that actually happened in ’04, though. Dunno, maybe a dumbf*ck war fixes such problems. Or maybe the war (nationalistic fervor) is what goosed the GOP’s Hispanic vote share?

Super’s not entirely wrong. If the GOP were to get serious about attracting more non-white votes, it would have make more than cosmetic changes (though simple things like not being bigotted jerks in public would help a little). They’d have to actually develop policies aimed at those voters. Conservatives often consider such things “vote buying” (note: military spending, farm subsidies, and anything else aimed primarily at well-off white people doesn’t count. Because shut up, that’s why); something done by liberals. Ergo, if you do those things, you’re not Conservative. QED.

“he problem, allegedly, is that in order to get to 60/40, you lose some of the usual Rep base. I don’t think that actually happened in ’04, though. Dunno, maybe a dumbf*ck war fixes such problems. Or maybe the war (nationalistic fervor) is what goosed the GOP’s Hispanic vote share?”

Plus, the conservative vote came out to support a series of amendments to state constitutions, largely focused on opposing gay rights, cynically pushed by Karl Rove, et al.

I know. He clearly thinks that various social ills (high levels of single-parent families, etc) are the result of innate defect, rather than being triggered by other factors. The decline of White working class areas hit hard by deindustrialization would seem to confirm the liberal counter-argument, but this apparently hasn’t penetrated (despite him seeming to get that job loss is bad for communities, when he rails against “open borders”).

What I’m saying is that in the short term, he’s only partly wrong. In the short term it’s true that various minority groups treated poorly in the past (and the present, to a lesser extent) have problems (at higher rates than White Americans as a whole) and getting votes from those folks tends to involve (shocker) trying to address those problems (in a manner other than yelling at them to not have the problems). The GOP can’t figure out how to come up with such policies, because any serious attempt immediately runs afoul of their core agenda of comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.

The above graph suggests that 60/40 Dem/Rep is attainable. The problem, allegedly, is that in order to get to 60/40, you lose some of the usual Rep base.

They are going to lose them anyways. It’s called old age and its going to do more damage to their base a hell of a lot quicker then they’d like to admit.

Remember how cigarette companies targeted younger people under the theory that they needed to replenish their ranks regularly due to the inherently fatality of their product (get ‘em young)? One would imagine the GOP would look at their demos, rethink this, and take a similar strategy so they don’t thin out their ranks instead of doubling down on the existing stupid.

They need to get new members and votes from somewhere. Do they think they grow on trees?

@Rob in CT: I agree that the core agenda of the Republican Party is to protect and enhance the wealth and power of the currently wealthy and powerful. I have to add that the bulk of Republican voters don’t know that is the party’s core. But that core is not driving the conflict. Their problem is that while they serve the interest of the .01%, they need to get 50% +1 to vote for them. In general they’ve been very successful in using religion and xenophobia to accomplish that. Their problem is how to attract the xenos without driving off the xenophobes. (Yes, Hispanic voters are by definition citizens, but they are still seen as foreign by the GOP base.) How do they enlarge a coalition of rubes when the rubes inside hate the rubes outside?

Personally, I think they could pull it off. After all, where is the base going to go? But to do so they would need a coordinated plan which requires a leader, which they don’t have. At the moment.

On the other hand, I’m not sure this matters. The GOP elite appear to believe they can buy a majority. Ignore SD, the real risk is that the GOPs will eventually just buy Rove’s permanent majority. They seem to be having considerable success at the state level.

They’re the party of the Haves and people who think they will become Haves, defending against the Have Nots Who Want Your Stuff. People can and do age in to that (folks in their 40s-50s tend to be peaking in earning power). And the GOP propoganda effort (that teacher is gonna steal your cookie!), while not as effective as it used to be, still works much better than it should.

So I do think their base will continue to erode, but not as quickly as we hope. They can hang on, using the House of Reps and control of various state-level governments, for quite some time. The Presidency is a bigger stretch.

If/when I see Democrats turning out for elections (particularly non-Presidential elections) properly, I’ll be more likely to get my hopes up. The Democrats have often had demographic advantages but lost elections. I am therefore wary of triumphant declarations about how the other party is clearly screwed.

[This may still be the 2004 effect. I *still* can't understand that election. I likely never will.]

@Rob in CT: The aspiration aspect is key, as is the message “you should get to keep what you earn” and “you know better how to spend your money than does a large, impersonal bureaucracy.” Indeed, these are compelling messages, but they also grossly oversimplify reality.

It’s increasingly difficult to win with that message, because it involves having people ignore a growing mountain of evidence of massive and growing wealth disparity that simply cannot be explained by virtuous behavior (hard work, ingenuity, clean & sober living, etc). It’s becoming more and more obvious the game is rigged. But that old GOP message still has pull, and of course that’s partly because it’s not entirely wrong. It’s only mostly wrong, and more importantly it’s mostly wrong *at this time in these circumstances* It’s not always wrong under any circumstances. It’s possible to imagine a society in which it’s mostly right (never *entirely* right).

As it happens, I am working on a post about Republicans and demographics, which has me looking at exit polls. According to CNN, Bush won 44% of the Hispanic vote and 58% of the white vote. If there’s a tradeoff, it isn’t much of one.

Anyway, the counterargument now is that new Hispanic voters are different than old Hispanic voters. Previously, a higher percentage of Hispanic voters were Cuban (a more conservative demographic) and a larger number of them were assimilated Hispanics (ones who have been here for generations). So the problem is the Hispanics and not the GOP.

Countering against this argument is the Asian-American vote, which used to be relatively close down the middle and now skews heavily towards the Democrats. More heavily, in fact, than Democrats. There hasn’t been the sort of wave-of-wave immigration with the Asian-Americans as there has been with the Hispanics, at least I am pretty sure there hasn’t, which suggests that the GOP has a problem of minorities that used to vote Republican that are not voting Republican anymore, and/or children of the same who are almost uniformly voting Democratic. All of which points to things the GOP is and is not doing.

It’s that you cannot do things that are “conservative” and appeal to such voters. If you successfully appeal to Them, you have done so by being liberal.

I think the next part of his argument is “and becoming liberal won’t work because if people have two liberal parties to choose from, they’ll choose the really liberal party and conservatives will stay home. So Republicans will still lose.”

The support for this theory is not very robust, however. If this were true, all of the countries that were more leftward than the US wouldn’t have a “more conservative” and “less conservative” party.

The demographic shifts in the US could result in the “conservative” party being something that we wouldn’t today consider conservative, but it would still likely be referred to as the conservative party and liberals would still be relentlessly critical of the newly-defined conservatism.

@trumwill: I think a lot of the Asian fleeing to the Democrats has to do with the Republican mind-boggingly stupid enshrinement of such idiocies as Creationism and anti-AGW. Plus the immense chip they have on their shoulders against “elites” and “education.”

A trend I’ve often seen with my scientist friends has been (young == Libertarian) –> (get some experience of the real word == get more liberal)–> have kids (become really liberal.)

@grumpy realist: My theory is that they’ve created a donut hole with minorities. Educated and skilled minorities are off-put by the GOP’s social stances (particularly the ones you describe, as well as abortion and others) even when they could agree with a lot of the economic stuff, while those that are less educated and less skilled are off-put by the economic stuff, even if they share some of the social values. So they’re having trouble at both ends.

That’s part of it, anyway. The other half of it would take paragraphs to describe and it tends to make liberals and conservatives both mad when I try.

I think a lot of the Asian fleeing to the Democrats has to do with the Republican mind-boggingly stupid enshrinement of such idiocies as Creationism and anti-AGW.

I don´t think so. Asians, Blacks and other minorities share a common trait: the fact that you are going to be singled out by your ethnicity. You may try to forget about your race, but people will keep remembering you that you are Asian, Black, Latino, Native American or whatever. Asians rightly complain about how they are portrayed on mass media. Sure, Asians have a higher income than Whites, and they are less likely to be harassed by the cops. But they are still singled out as the “other”, and many White people have no idea about that. Take a look at the debate about the name of that NFL Franchise in Washington DC. That´s why many Whites have no idea about how offensive ethnic slurs can be.

(I would be considered an “Asian” in the US, my best friend is Black, my girlfriend is Black, I know about that).

The fact that there is not a single minority(With maybe the exception of Cuban-Americans) voting for Republicans is because the GOP became party of Whites.

@Andre Kenji: Everything you describe was also true when Dole got half of the Asian-American vote. Something has shifted since then, even though back then they were also considered the party of white people. I think it’s related to a number of things, including an increasing cultural emphasis on issues that they were never particularly comfortable with but had a harder time ignoring. It became a more cultural party. To be sure, a culture that white people are more comfortable with, but I think that’s only part of it. I think a lot of Asian-Americans left for the same reasons a lot of white people in my cohort (educated, intelligent, socially moderate) did. I suspect if you look at a lot of the whites who have left the GOP, they’d have a lot in common with a large chunk of the Asian-Americans that did. (I’m not Asian-American, but I grew up around a lot of them – and a lot of them that identified as Republican or had sympathies in that direction in the 90’s. I’m not sure any of them still do.)

I wish you would find something other than the 44% number from CNN. It has been discredited many times by bother liberal and conservatives It was used in the Jeb Bush book on amnesty and open borders and was used to embarrass Jeb Bush fora failure to fact check properly . Even the chart above has the more realistic number of 40% for GW Bush. The 50% number for Bush in Texas is one of the data point that has been used to discredit the 44% number. Given that Bush lost by huge margins in the counties in Texas that are overwhelming Latino, the 50% exit number would have meant that Bush received more than 50% of the Latino vote in places like San Antonio and Harris County. The methodology of the exist polls have called into question in estimating Latino voting trends.

Remember that when GW Bush was the governor of Texas there was not a single Latino in the state House and Senate Republican delegations. Texas is a red state because white voters vote for Republicans. Latinos have always been loyal Democratic Party voters in Texas.

You need to define really liberal to explain what you mean by scientist are really liberal. I have never met a scientist who was in favor of social engineering and are not excited about paying high levels of taxes or filling out a ton of government forms. However, most scientist do have a very Darwinian view of the world. Do you really think most people who have advanced degrees in science believe that everyone can learn calculus if the government just spend enough money and has better teachers?

@Andre Kenji: Interestingly, the Republican Party then was described at the time very similar to the Republican Party now. Anyway, I think race specifically is part of it, but I think culture is a lot of it as well (leaving for similar reasons as other whites from similar demographics).

It’s worth noting that even if Romney had gotten 44% in 2012, he still would have lost the election. One of the interesting things I’ve discovered while looking through all of this data is how overestimated the importance of the Hispanic vote – in and of itself – is in the media.

@trumwill:
I think it is partly a cultural thing, but at least here (Hawaii) a big part of it is how tied to religion that culture is. There are as many Buddhists here as Christians and a large cohort of the Republican party has made it plain that to be anything other than Christian is to be less than a real American.

How is it a hobby horse when it has such a massive impact on policy and governance in the U.S.

Even someone like Elizabeth Warren managed to discuss the top in a veiled way by talking about “good schools in good neighborhoods.” I doubt if all of those “liberal” scientist discussed above are willing to sned their children to anything else but good schools in good neighborhoods.

And no, there is nothing innate about blacks and Latino that causes them to have children ot of wed lock given that the percentage of Latino and black children born out of wedlock used to be much lower. However, as Latino and black culture has changed in the U.S. in the last few decades, partially in response to government policy, the percentage of children born to unwed mothers has gone up and neither those moms or their children are ever going to vote for the more conservative policy. David Axelrod is so far ahead of the Republicans that no only are the Democrats benefitting from the decline of marriage and married mothers but the Democrats have figured out a way to keep the Republicans from even discussing the issue (the war on women).

@grumpy realist: My theory is that they’ve created a donut hole with minorities. Educated and skilled minorities are off-put by the GOP’s social stances (particularly the ones you describe, as well as abortion and others) even when they could agree with a lot of the economic stuff, while those that are less educated and less skilled are off-put by the economic stuff, even if they share some of the social values. So they’re having trouble at both ends.

Trumwill, that sounds really plausible to me. [I'd be interested in your long-form argument, even if you're concerned you'd piss people off]

I have never met a scientist who was in favor of social engineering and are not excited about paying high levels of taxes or filling out a ton of government forms.

Supe, you might want to consider that just because you haven’t met any doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty. I don’t meet very many wingnuts in day to day life, but I’m well aware there are millions of them in the country.

Just based on my own anecdotal experience (also not really worth anything), it sounds like you’re conflating engineers with scientists…

I do think that Latinos are persuadable right now. Certainly they are not happy at all with Obama’s immigration policy of deportation. The problem is that the GOP keeps saying in just about every possible way that they are not welcome in the party, and the conservative policies are not meant to help Latinos, but the exact opposite. The “Southern Strategy” is all well and good if you have mostly white people, but the problem is that it has worked so well for Republicans that they just can’t give it up, and their own constituencies refuse to let them shift (as evidenced again and again by superdestroyer).

The problem long term though is that what the Republicans are doing is creating an anti-Latino brand and they are persuading every young Latino that they should never vote for the GOP. We know from the political socialization literature that a) whatever party one votes for when one is younger, one is more likely to vote in the future and b) once one sides with one or another party one is more likely to agree with those party’s policies. In other words, by following this scorched earth policy of anti-Obamacare, anti-minimum wage, anti-government benefits, anti-immigration, and anti everything Latino (calling them “wetbacks” “moochers” etc) they are in fact creating a more liberal electorate than would otherwise exist. If I was a GOP strategist, this would be driving me crazy, but since I would prefer more liberal policies, myself. I say: Please proceed, Republicans. In other words:

@Latino_in_Boston, your comments make much sense and you have an amazing grasp of the obvious concerning Republicans. The one thing that you and others, like Steven Taylor, don’t seem to have a good grasp of is the fact that Latinos and Hispanics are members of the White race. Did you not know that? They are. Hispanic or Latino is not a ‘race’, it is an Ethnicity. As such, people should not try to make them fall into a separate race because they are not part of it. Neither should some refer to the tanner-skinned Hispanics and Latinos who have the Native American influence as ‘people of color’ because again their color is White. Just look at their birth certificates at any government office to find out. There are millions of blue-eyed, blond haired Latinos and Hispanics all over the world. Just look at Christina Aguilera, Vanna White, Charro, Rita Hayworth, etc. and other celebrities. And let’s not forget also that people from the Middle East are also considered to be White. Bet you didn’t know that. So, again, please make it clear that you are speaking about *Ethnicity* and not color when you speak about Latinos and Hispanics. Italians are also *Latin* you know (remember Italian Rudolph Valentino “the Latin Lover”?) Likewise are the French, Portuguese, Romanians, etc. yet for some strange reason those Latin groups are not referred to as Latinos. Interesting huh!

In other words, by following this scorched earth policy of anti-Obamacare, anti-minimum wage, anti-government benefits, anti-immigration, and anti everything Latino (calling them “wetbacks” “moochers” etc) they are in fact creating a more liberal electorate than would otherwise exist.

Huh. This makes some sense to me.

I’m not Latino, but something similar trigger my leftward march. In my case, it was being called all sorts of nasty names in conjunction with “liberal” in 2002-2003 (which, at the time, I found rather puzzling, as I self-IDed as a socially liberal but fiscally conservative quasi-Republican), as I make increasingly impassioned arguments against Iraq!, The Sequel. I’m not actually a natural liberal – I’ve been a “have” since birth, I’m oh-so very White (at least by our modern standards. It’s true that if you go back in time far enough, being 1/4 Sicilian might have DQed me), and so forth. But I’m also an atheist raised in CT and sent to public schools, so I wasn’t indoctrinated into certain beliefs. I *was* raised to think poorly of Democrats (incompetant wrt foreign policy and domestic policy alike, wasteful of Our Money in damn fool idealistic crusades home and abroad). It took several eye-openers to change my upbringing-induced affinity for conservatism/libertarianism over to an affinity for liberalism. The first such shock was Round 1 of the Bush tax cuts (I spent the 90s listening to conservative rants about the national debt and the first thing they do is cut revenue, right after we’d *finally* just about balanced the budget?). That was relatively minor, as there was a case for at least short-term stimulus following the dot com crash, but it was the first real dent in my belief the GOP was fiscally sober. Then Iraq. W.T.F. Huge, politics-changing event. Then the 2nd round of tax cuts, when it dawned on me that there was no “temporary” in the plan (the sunset provision was only in there to allow passage via reconcilliation IIRC) and the obviously stupid “revenue will actually rise” (nominally, yes, because pop growth + gdp growth, but anyone with a brain had to know that the claim is, fundamentally, a lie) was nothing but prole feed. All the while, critics of the increasingly disasterous war were “anti-american” and “liberal defeatists” and all sorts of other bullshit.

Man, did that set ME straight. And sure, the Christianism, the anti-immigrant rhetoric and the increasingly obvious racism was unpleasant and turned me off too, but I noticed those things all the more once I’d been so forefully told that I wasn’t in the tribe.

I was never going to be a “Conservative” Republican. That really was impossible. But I absolutely could’ve been a “New England” Republican. Now, if that was on offer? I would likely decline. I’ve… seen too much.

But perhaps you don’t know that since both race and ethnicity are social constructs, one can be white in one context and not in another. Of course, Latino is an even more complicated moniker that lumps together people from all over Latin America (and those who have never been) that are, in fact, black, white and everything in between. Still, while according to the US Census I am white, it doesn’t mean that the majority of people in this country would see me as white. This seems pretty obvious, so I have no clue what you’re trying to say.

The one thing that you and others, like Steven Taylor, don’t seem to have a good grasp of is the fact that Latinos and Hispanics are members of the White race.

No, it´s more complicated. In fact, racism is a very complicated thing in Latin America because almost everyone has ancestors coming from two or more races. Racism in Latin America generally means someone that´s 20% African discriminating against someone that´s 60%. Officially, half of the Brazilian population is white, but many of these people would be considered “Black” in the US.

Sometimes, a Black from the United States goes to Latin America, then he sees a bunch of people that HE thinks are Black, but that consider themselves as white, and he thinks that´s the biggest scandal in the world.

And yes, we are not talking about Gisele Bundchen or Sofia Vergara, but about people coming from rural areas of Central America and Mexico, where the majority of the population comes from Amerindian Descent.

On the other hand, the real problem is that difficult to find any large party outside the United States that resembles today´s GOP. There are the far right parties in Europe(That´s why there is so much praise for the UKIP among Movement Conservatives), one could argue that Putin´s is similar to the GOP, but outside of that there is NOTHING resembling the GOP.

I would think that the problem is the GOP, not Hispanics.

Italians are also *Latin* you know (remember Italian Rudolph Valentino “the Latin Lover”?) Likewise are the French, Portuguese, Romanians, etc. yet for some strange reason those Latin groups are not referred to as Latinos.

Simple. As it´s often argued, the word “Iberian America” is more appropriate than “Latin America”. Sure, there is the Quebec, but the colonization of Quebec was very different than the colonization of Latin America, where both the Spanish and the Portuguese used similar structures of colonization. In Latin America, there was also the influence of Africans and Amerindians. I think that the influence of the Amerindians is the largest trait that all countries in Latin America share, not the Iberian influence.

I know many physical scientist and they also understand that everyone cannot be taught calculus, they do not send their children to schools filled with minorities (except for Asians), and they have zero interest in social engineering, They may know how to mouth politically-correct views and they may hate Repubicans but they almost never live their lives from the POV of being a liberal.

A very liberal person would agree with the statement that everyone can learn calculus (or fill in the blank harder subject) if the government just spends enough money, pays teachers enough, properly motivates the students, and put enough effort into the teaching. However, anyone who has every tried to teach everyone math knows that different people have different levels of natural ability when it comes to math and no amount of work is going to turn them into scientific geniuses. Believing that everyone should go to college is a good example of social engineering and is a good way to show that very few scientist are really liberal.

Also, I have worked with many scientist that if they live in a neighborhood that is wealthy can always find a political correct excuse to avoid the local public schools if the percentages of blacks and Latinos is too high. I have learned that when a “liberal” scientist (or almost any college professor) criticizes teachers, principles, or the curriculum, what they are really criticizing is the ethnic make up of a schools students, the staff, or both.

Many people who work in the scientist who claim to be liberal fall into the category of believing that they are clever enough to take advantage of government programs while avoiding all of the downside. This is the time of year when I have to bite my tongue every time a “liberal” coworker complains about their taxes. I just want to ask them what they thought they had been voting for all of these years.

A very liberal person would agree with the statement that everyone can learn calculus (or fill in the blank harder subject) if the government just spends enough money, pays teachers enough, properly motivates the students, and put enough effort into the teaching

No. There is a consensus among non-teachers from both sides of the political spectrum that teachers can make all kinds of miracles with poor students. That´s the reasoning behind the so called “reformers”, Take a look at Erik Hannushek, hardly a left-liberal, and his reasoning about getting rid of the 15% lower perfoming teachers, or something like that.

In fact, one of the biggest liberal idols on education, Diane Ravitch, points out that the bad results of students in the inner cities is due to child poverty.

And why shouldn’t he? He also has quite the picture of blacks, Latinos, and gay people built up in his head…

Also, I have worked with many scientist that if they live in a neighborhood that is wealthy can always find a political correct excuse to avoid the local public schools if the percentages of blacks and Latinos is too high. I have learned that when a “liberal” scientist (or almost any college professor) criticizes teachers, principles, or the curriculum, what they are really criticizing is the ethnic make up of a schools students, the staff, or both.

Diane Ravitch, is a very good example of the type of “very liberal” individual who believes that everyone can learn calculus if the government commits enough resources to teaching students calculus. Of course, no one with an advanced degree in a hard science would believe the same thing. Those scientist through their own education and experiences have been exposed to too many upper middle class kids who just could not learn calculus. Those same scientist have suffered through enough weed out classes to under the Social Darwinian nature of higher education and the work place in the U.S.

What I find rather amusing here is that the only specific ravage of the Great Wave of Liberalism that the One Party State is going to bring that is mentioned in this thread is that it will result in an effort to teach all schoolchildren how to do calculus.